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Hi All,
Take a deep dive into my interview with composer BLAKE NEELY on how he charted an intensely rhythmic course through the Battle of the Atlantic with his thrillingly suspenseful and heroic score for the superior WWII film GREYHOUND!
http://www.filmmusicmag.com/?p=20825
Thanks as always for setting course with Filmmusicmag.com for the latest composer interviews and soundtrack reviews!
Daniel Schweiger
Soundtrack Editor
Filmmusicmag.com
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Posted: |
Jul 15, 2020 - 8:05 AM
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By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
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I think Hanks may have been emulating Gerard Butler on Hunter Killer, which I got on DvD recently and thought it was fairly cheaply put together - I've said it before and I'll say it again - the use of cheaper digital camerawork is highly annoying. All I need is one whiff of motion blur, or ghosting (like the low grade images of the Apollo 11 TV transmission from the Moon) and it dies an instant death. Gerard got Gary Oldman for what was 3 days, if I remember right, and another actor I kept on trying to recognise until I watched the 'making of' feature, when I was surprised to see it was Toby Stephens. The idea of the truel at the end was terribly fanciful, but yeah, I know, it's only a 'movie.' As for Greyhound, I take it Hanks was sort of paying tribute to all the brave crews who withstood harsh, freezing heaving seas to enable supplies to get to Great Britain in the face of an implacable foe. I haven't seen the film yet. What class of destroyer is Hanks supposedly in command of?
It sounds like a loudness war, only for motion-pictures, if that's what you call 'em - erroneously IMO. If it was made in the manner of The Cruel Sea, the audience would die with popcorn in their face.
Edit: Just checked. The destroyer is based on the real-life Fletcher class.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/07/11/for-his-naval-epic-greyhound-tom-hanks-cast-americas-last-world-war-ii-destroyer/
I paid a visit to HMS Belfast, which is permanently docked to the South Bank in London, quite a few years ago. I pretty much toured the entire ship and when I got up to the bridge, the feeling of vertigo looking out to the focsle, with the gun turrets down below made me feel giddy due to the vertiginous sense of being elevated on high, which I wasn't expecting. So If I were on a wartime voyage in a heavy swell with heaving seas and being thrown around, every window would be covered with what you Yanks call 'barf' stuff.
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Posted: |
Jul 15, 2020 - 8:44 AM
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By: |
Last Child
(Member)
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LC, my point is that a modern, young and restless audience wouldn't be able to hack the subtleties of the more sedate approach of a 'film' set in the period from which The Cruel Sea harks. Anyway, I find it strange that nobody has thought to make a film about Lord Mountbatten's operational duties in WWII, when he commanded the K class destroyer, HMS Kelly. When the Germans invaded Crete, he and his crew experienced pure hell. I've mentioned this twice before on the other side, but no one seems to notice or care.
I'm only talking about the music in battle scenes, since the battles are what both films share. Even there, the movies are different animals, but I still think non-music moments can be just as or more effective.
The HMS Kelly sounds like an interesting discussion to bring up (I guess, again) in the non-music forum.
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Posted: |
Jul 15, 2020 - 9:03 AM
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By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
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I'm only talking about the music in battle scenes, since the battles are what both films share. Even there, the movies are different animals, but I still think non-music moments can be just as or more effective.
The HMS Kelly sounds like an interesting discussion to bring up (I guess, again) in the non-music forum.
I read Kenneth Poolman's book about the Kelly. I do have Silent Hunter 4 (I think), the sub sim set in the Pacific Theatre, which I played for a while - it takes a good 7-8 torpedoes to sink the Yamato, requiring salvoes from both the bow and stern, which means you have to do a 180 pdq one way or the other. Then the destroyers start to sniff you out and down come the depth charges - WHAM, WHAM, WHAM! I seem to be getting carried away. The punchline, LC, is that I tend to play the incidental music that is part of the game while I'm at it. The program is sort of semi-intelligent in that when things are quiet, you get more sedate music playing, but when things hot up, the game's 'score' starts to build up to add to the tension. So, no wonder Greyhound may have an audio trail of a video game, which is maybe a bit of a shame, because films seem to have to compete with the home game medium these days, if you catch my drift? Again, it means playing the game at home is more interactively demanding and interesting than watching a movie depicting the same thing. Therefore, a movie absolutely has to make up the difference without looking and sounding like what I've already seen before a whole load of times. Yeah?
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Posted: |
Jul 15, 2020 - 9:26 AM
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By: |
Last Child
(Member)
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I read Kenneth Poolman's book about the Kelly. I do have Silent Hunter 4 (I think), the sub sim set in the Pacific Theatre, which I played for a while - it takes a good 7-8 torpedoes to sink the Yamato, requiring salvoes from both the bow and stern, which means you have to do a 180 pdq one way or the other. Then the destroyers start to sniff you out and down come the depth charges - WHAM, WHAM, WHAM! I seem to be getting carried away. The punchline, LC, is that I tend to play the incidental music that is part of the game while I'm at it. The program is sort of semi-intelligent in that when things are quiet, you get more sedate music playing, but when things hot up, the game's 'score' starts to build up to add to the tension. So, no wonder Greyhound may have an audio trail of a video game, which is maybe a bit of a shame, because films seem to have to compete with the home game medium these days, if you catch my drift? Again, it means playing the game at home is more interactively demanding and interesting than watching a movie depicting the same thing. Therefore, a movie absolutely has to make up the difference without looking and sounding like what I've already seen before a whole load of times. Yeah?
A video game simulation might be all you'll get for the HMS Kelly at Crete. I always suspected conventional movies might disappear if viewers could enter them through interactive hardware. Why "identify" with a character when you can become the character?
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Posted: |
Jul 15, 2020 - 9:34 AM
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By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
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A video game simulation might be all you'll get for the HMS Kelly at Crete. I always suspected conventional movies might disappear if viewers could enter them through interactive hardware. Why "identify" with a character when you can become the character?
Nailed it. Like a stake through the bleedin' heart. Yet, I think that it is the character of Mountbatten and his crew that a motion picture event could encapsulate, and convey their qualities to any audience, of real people who lived the real events, which refreshes the parts video games cannot reach. When I think of the end of the story of the Kelly, real tears appear. You have to wring that raw emotion out of the audience and make them feel the sacrifice, or Robert Shaw scraping his nails down a blackboard. 
All you need is Robert Wise to direct and well, you know the rest . . .
Edit: It seems the story of the Kelly and Mountbatten was filmed in thinly veiled 'Camouflage.' Silly of me not to have figured it out earlier  :
https://www.military-history.org/articles/war-on-film-in-which-we-serve.htm
http://ww2today.com/23rd-may-1941-hms-kelly-sunk
For a comparison with reality, the film can be viewed here on YT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOeg3GGI7AY
A modern film with old fashioned values can tell the actual story without the necessity of a distorting prism, however, there are those today who may not want it to be refashioned because what is there tells the story with a sufficiency of clarity. But HMS Kelly did not take part in the Dunkirk evacuation even though she did participate in an equivalent operation rescuing trapped British troops from Namsos during the ill-fated struggle comprising the Norwegian campaign. Also, many of Noel Coward's 'speeches' are those of Mountbatten word-for-word. Oh well, Greyhound it is, then.
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